We're Born Naked ... Notes on Simon Doonan's Complete Story of Drag (Part 2: On Butch Drag, Black Drag, Historical Drag, and Comedy Drag)

Simon Doonan: Drag: The Complete Story (2019) [a] 

Photo by Greg Endries and posted on simondoonan.com 

 

 

I. 

 

I don't have much to say about women who like to cross-dress as men (drag kings). 

 

It's not that butch drag doesn't deserve analysis, it's just that the topic doesn't particularly excite my interest and Doonan irritates me in this chapter with his lazy politics of empowerment (which I critiqued in part one of this post): 

 

"Butching it up, aping the style of men and making it their own, has put many women in the driver's seat and improved their lives." (70) [b]

 

It seems that hyper-femininity only empowers when you're a man and that women who are happy wearing pastel twinsets with matching skirts are regressive and reinforcing the gender binary. For Doonan, a woman in trousers who has released her inner butch feels powerful, looks stylish, and can earn big bucks. 

 

And, best of all, she has "banished the ditsy ruffled femininity" (75) that he finds so objectionable.   

 

Doonan's closing section to chapter 3 - 'Fey is the new butch' - argues that for many young people in this non-binary age of gender fluidity, "dressing with heavy-handed masculinity" and "aping the patriarchy (82) does not appeal. 

 

They want a new (non-toxic) look connected to their trans identity; more nuanced - which, I suppose, is fair enough, although, in my view, identity remains the problem (can't you see) and self-expression remains far less exciting (for me as a Deleuzian) than becoming-imperceptible.          

 

 

II. 

 

I also don't have much to say about black drag queens; although again, it's more because I feel this is outside my area of experience, knowledge and real interest [c], not because I believe it's undeserving of critical commentary, or is marginal to the world of drag. 

 

Doonan, however, seems knowledgeable of and fascinated by the black drag queen as "an enduring icon" (85) and source of inspiration. One almost worries, in fact, that his admiration tips over into racial fetishism at times: 

 

"She generously and magnanimously enriches the culture [...] and we must all bow down before her.

      The Medusan ferocity that characterizes glamour drag queens is amplified in the black drag queen, and augmented with unique black irony and wit. The black drag queen is both comedic and glamorous. The black drag queen is fierce." (85) 

 

I can, I suppose, see the appeal - but this goes a bit too far, I think. 

 

Doonan is, one suspects, over-egging the pudding in the attempt to firstly compensate for his white privilege and, secondly, assuage his white guilt. Talented black artists and performers have obviously made a vital contribution to contemporary popular culture (as have Jewish artists and performers), but whether we all need to fall down on our knees and kiss their arses in eternal "#gratitude" (85) is debatable.    

 

Also, I'm less than convinced that "creativity and originality is a function of marginal status" (86) and that individuals "with marginal status have always contributed disproportionately to the culture" (86). Perhaps. But I'd be a bit more convinced if Doonan actually offered some evidence to back up his claims. As it is, I see such thinking as, at best, romantic and, at worst, indicative of slave morality.  

 

Ultimately, some black drag queens are fabulous - and some are not. To say, as Doonan does, that all of them possess "that mystical creative charisma" (88) is just a form of positive stereotyping or benevolent prejudice.  

 

 

III. 

 

Chapter 5 is on drag history - or herstory as Doonan insists on writing, thereby referencing a feminist pun and common etymological misunderstanding. It is, apparently, a brutal, bizarre and cautionary tale, full of "madness and excess" (103). So sounds interesting ...

 

The Ancient Egyptians loved a bit of androgynous glamour and the Greeks and Romans were also keen on drag and traces of transvestism are woven throughout ancient mythology and history. In fact, as Camille Paglia notes, drag is a global phenomenon. 

 

Fast-forwarding to modern Europe (and no one can race through world history faster than Doonan) ... 

 

"The Renaissance was a groovy, swinging period of creative expression and new ideas. Despite the cultural flowering, the Christian Church maintained an unforgiving position regarding the [...] evils of cross-dressing." (114) 

 

Fortunately, however, drag continued to flourish - seeking refuge in the theatre, where there's always been a steady supply of fresh-faced young men eager to don frocks and play the female roles: 

 

"With a bit of padding and extra rouge, a 16-year-old lad might give a convincing portrayal of a 26-year-old woman at the height of her erotic powers." (116)

 

Shakespeare perhaps pushes drag to its meta-most point in As You Like It, a play in which a male actor dresses as a woman, who dresses as a man, who dresses as a woman. Unfortunately, Shakespeare died in 1616, "thereby missing the dawn of the nelliest period in history: the Baroque" (119) [d]. 

 

That's a fun description of the period between 1600-1750, but I can't vouch for its historical accuracy. Indeed, it might be said that the Baroque was not inherently effeminate, but rather characterized by dramatic and ornate styles designed to project masculine power, wealth, and status.

 

While male fashion included elements such as wigs, high heels, and ribbons, these were viewed as lavish, not effeminate. In contrast, the subsequent Rococo period was deemed to be feminine and delicate; light and airy with lots of soft pastel colours and the use of natural forms such as shells and flora in art, interior design, and fashion. 

 

The point is: when reading history, one must be careful not to project one's own values and desires into the past and avoid interpreting events from a perspective shaped by the present. The past is not "a giant gender-inclusive dressing-up box, just waiting to be plundered" (131), no matter what drag performers may choose to believe [e]. 

 

Moving on, this note by Doonan caught my eye: 

 

"There was nothing unisex about the eighteenth-century Brits. Men's attire was butch and militaristic. Women's fashions were ornate and romantic in the extreme. The gendered nature of clothing added massively to the frisson generated by cross-dressing ..." (123)

 

If that's the case - and I think it is the case - then one might ask what's so desirable about dissolving the male/female binary and celebrating gender neutrality; hasn't Doonan just provided a thrilling argument not only for maintaining sexual distance but for widening the gulf? Uni-anything is always boring. 

 

Doonan closes chapter 5 by zooming into the modern (and postmodern) world, beginning in the so-called Mauve Decade of the 1890s when "drag becomes a thing, with a name and a reputation to uphold" (131) [f] and ending up in the present; "an era of relative tolerance where the acceptance and visibility of drag and trans have surged dramatically" (133). 

 

In a paragraph mixing cultural pessimism with political optimism, he writes:

 

"Masculinity is in retreat and gender nonconformity is on the march. Will it last? Some scholars point out that drag and trans have surged in late-stage civilizations [...] and that this freewheeling exploration of identity was immediately followed by sharp decline and total eclipse. Hopefully the prominence of drag and trans in our society is not an augur of doom, but rather a sign of the arrival of a progressive utopia that will last for eternity." (133)   

  

If I were Doonan, I'd keep more than my fingers crossed ... 

 

 

IV. 

 

Comedy drag, says Doonan, is an enduring showbiz staple that continues to amuse; everyone loves a pantomime dame - apart from those, like me, who don't find Christopher Biggins particularly amusing, either in or out of drag [g]. 

 

For Doonan, the dame might be a loveable figure, but, to my mind, she often represents the most banal version of the craft. Whilst glamour drag at least hints at something dangerous and transformative, the comedy drag of the pantomime variety feels too much like a cheap caricature; a way of neutralising the seductive threat of the feminine by turning it into an end of the pier joke. It's drag devoid of anything Medusan. 

 

In fact, Doonan admits as much: 

 

"Comedy drag sprang from a desire to disarm the nightmarish female archetypes of Victorian England [...] Strict governesses, relentless nags, ruler-wielding schoolteachers and cruel stepmothers [...]" (140)

 

Reading this, one might almost think there was something a little misogynistic about it [h], though Doonan says that such drag performance has "obvious psycho-therapeutic benefits" (140) (I'm not quite sure for whom). 

 

Whilst reading between the lines, one suspects Doonan also sees a radical political element to this genre of drag; that it represents an attack on Queen Victoria - "the ultimate disapproving matriarch [... who] unwittingly fuelled the bawdy drag-strewn irreverence of Victorian music halls" (140) - something that really wasn't the case.   

 

For while true that 19th-century British music halls and pantomimes frequently featured drag queens and female impersonators - and whilst satirical commentary was often part of the act - there is no evidence that Queen Victoria was a direct or frequent target of mockery. 

 

Indeed, direct mockery of the monarch was heavily restricted by censorship laws and tempered by the popularity of the Queen amongst her subjects. Any ridicule of the rich and powerful was aimed at the swells, toffs, and big nobs in society - not Her Majesty [i]. 

 

Moving on, Doonan has some interesting things to say about the boom in comedy drag post-Second World War:

 

"The returning troops brought home their enthusiasm for drag and somehow infected the entire population. [...] It is no exaggeration to say that, once the telly started to appear in British living rooms, we Brits began to drown in drag." (147) 

 

He and his best pal loved dressing up in drag and watching comics on the TV dress up in drag. But I guess one has to be that way inclined and, as indicated in a note below - [g] - as a child I was never particularly taken with drag. 

 

Thus, for example, whilst it's true that Benny Hill would perform in drag "in order to generate cheeky-but-family-friendly primetime laughs" (147), he did not invent one single, famous drag character that defined him and I much preferred watching Hill as Fred Scuttle or Ernie the milkman to seeing him in drag.   

 

Things changed in the late '60s, when "gay culture came screaming out of the shadows, with drag following close on its heels" (148). As gay bars, pubs and clubs proliferated, "so did the number of performing drag queens" (148). 

 

But they weren't so family-friendly; "this new wave of drag queens was angry, loud, proud and foul-mouthed" (148) - but also very funny, says Doonan: "The rude and fabulous creativity and comedic talent that gushed forth during this period of new-found freedom is remarkable." (148)

 

Drag, says Doonan, became "more gay, and more postmodern" (149); a sentence that makes smile and which one feels tempted to interrogate, but which I'll pass over due to space restrictions, though one would like to know what Doonan means by the latter term, which he uses on several occasions in his book. I guess he simply means comedy drag became "hipper and more self-aware" (150), for constructing as he is a complete story of drag, I doubt he's overly incredulous towards metanarratives.    

 

And today?

 

"Today, as more and more trans comedians and entertainers take the stage, the face of comedy drag is changing. The bawdy raging postmodern campy humour of pub, club and disco is morphing into something more subtle and emotionally real." (158)

 

I think Doonan is saying that drag has gone woke and is now designed for a new "gender-inclusive generation" (158) who respond less to cruelty and irony and more to vulnerability and victimhood; less Lily Savage and more Justin Vivian Bond, whose act is "infused with a subtle melancholic humour" (159) and promotes values of care, community, and kindness. 

 

The world, says Doonan, "has become a kinder, gentler place" (159) - I have to say, I haven't noticed that here on Harold Hill - and drag queens are spreading a message of "inclusivity, creativity and empowerment" (160). 

 

Unless you happen to be a straight white male, which for Doonan equates with being overbearing, treacherous and Trumpian. Out with toxic masculinity and in with "suave gay metrosexual identity" (160). Who's subscribing to simplistic binary opposition now, Simon?   

 

Notes

 

[a] Page references given in this (in round brackets) refer to the concise paperback edition of this work, published by Laurence King, in 2024.  

 

[b] Surely this is really only true of a few women working in the arts and showbiz ...? I'm not sure that the most successful approach for women in other (traditionally male) environments has been to masquerade as one of the boys - and don't see why they should have to do so just to prove themselves and gain respect. 

 

[c] Having said that, I did write a post earlier this year on voguing (27 Jan 2026) - click here - though it was essentially about Malcolm McLaren and Madonna, rather than the black dancers and drag queens who created the scene. 

 

[d] For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, nelly is a slang word used to describe an overtly effeminate man (not necessarily but more often than not homosexual), who adopts stereotypical feminine behaviours, mannerisms, or interests. Whilst historically used negatively in the straight world, it is sometimes used as an affectionate label within the queer community (as here by Doonan). 

 

[e] Doonan writes: "But history is not all thigh-slapping pastiche and nostalgia. To study the arc of civilization is to be drenched in blood, madness and brutality. Drag and trans, always vulnerabe to shifts in politics, have often felt the cat-o'-nine-tails." (133)

 

[f] Actually, the first recorded use of the term drag in its modern sense was in 1870. It is believed to have originated in theatre slang; male performers playing female roles wore long skirts that would literally trail or drag on the floor.   

 

[g] Come to think of it, I've never really been fond of drag artists. As a child, I grew up watching Danny La Rue on TV, but never found him remotely entertaining and hated his sentimental theme song, 'On Mother Kelley's Doorstep' (a popular music hall number from the 1920s). I also declined all offers to attend a pantomime at Christmas.

      Having said that, I did like Dick Emery's Mandy (Ooh! You are awful ...) and one of my favourite scenes in any of the Carry On films is in Carry On Constable (1960), in which Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey drag up as Ethel and Agatha. I discuss this scene in a post dated 9 April 2022, titled 'Carry On Cross Dressing': click here.   

 

[h] The question of whether drag is misogynistic is a subject of intense debate. Critics argue it creates a grotesque caricature of women, while proponents view it as a celebration of femininity and a subversion of rigid gender norms. 

      It's certainly worth considering if the empowerment of the performers that Doonan celebrates is based upon the mocking exploitation of actual women. Worth recalling too how blackface used to be hugely popular and seen as just a harmless bit of fun. 

      Readers interested (and perhaps undecided) on this issue might like to see two letters published in The Guardian (7 April 2024); one arguing that drag is a sexist caricature, the other that it's a fascinating and fabulous art form: click here.  

[i] Readers might also note that there remains a rumour circulating in certain drag circles that one artist was so popular that Victoria reportedly attended a show in disguise to find out what all the fuss was about. This is most likely an urban legend, but it nevertheless casts further doubt on Doonan's claim that the Queen was completely humourless and/or a target of public ridicule. 

 

 

Part one of this post - on glamour drag and art drag - can be accessed by clicking here. 

 

Part three of this post - on popstar drag, cinema drag, and radical drag - can be accessed here. 

 

We're Born Naked ... Notes on Simon Doonan's Complete Story of Drag (Part 1: On Glamour Drag and Art Drag)

(Laurence King Publishing, 2024)

 

 

I.

 

Firstly, I should point out that the above is a concise edition. And so, whether it's quite as comprehensive as the story told in the complete (hardback) edition, published in 2019, I don't know. 

 

However, I'm guessing by the shared number of pages, that it is and that this (paperback) edition is therefore just smaller in size, but not scope; a book to be carried and read on the tube, rather than left at home sitting on one's coffee table. 

 

I believe the only real textual difference is that this mini-edition comes with a Foreword by Fenton Bailey, the award-winning British producer, director and author of Screen Age: How TV Shaped Our Reality ... (2022) - a book that I have not read, but which, as a Baudrillardian and one who forages "the detritus of popular culture" [a], has a title that interests.   

 

As Bailey points out, Doonan aims to give drag historical context in the hope that this will give drag queens a greater understanding of themselves, thus providing "a creative boost and a sense of empowerment" (2). 

 

Obviously, I'm tempted, as a Foucauldian, to insert a rolling eye emoji here, as this clichéd notion of empowerment is one that triggers a certain amount of irritation and disdain. But I shall resist the urge to do so, even though it pains me to see how this concept continues to be employed by the very people it was designed to further entrap by providing a false sense of agency that hides the real functioning of power.  

 

Bailey also insists that we live in performative times and that drag is thus the perfect medium or art form for the 21st century: 

 

"We are children of the screen [...] we have grown up [...] watching countless performances. It makes sense that we would explore and express ourselves in the same way, playing and performing as the star of our own musical/drama/sitcom - or all three." (3)

 

That's an interesting point of view and one I'm broadly sympathetic with. 

 

However, I smiled to see Bailey end his Foreword by suggesting that it's conservatives who have "failed to address any of the serious issues facing America and the world" (3) - not drag queens and trans activists who subscribe to this playful and performative ideology. 

 

That seems a little partisan and sectarian to me ... And I'm surprised that after eighteen seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race - Bailey and his partner Randy Barbato are executive producers - he's still subscribing to a repressive hypothesis and speaking about attempts to erase the LGBTQ community [b].   

 

To demonise conservatives and posit a simulated political struggle is to avoid looking at how drag itself has been institutionalised and robbed of its subversive character by the corporate-media machine that Bailey himself plays a leading role within. What is the drag queen today if not just another neo-liberal subject within a commercial universe ...? 

 

 

II.  

 

To be fair, Simon Doonan is alert to the dangers of corporate assimilation. As he notes in his Introduction, the mainstreaming of drag over recent years "seemed like a death knell" (7). 

 

However, thanks to the success of RuPaul's Drag Race and the new generation of queens, drag has been reinvented and the future looks even more fabulous than the past. The gender revolution has also transformed everything for the better; gender fluidity results in a revival of interest in drag. 

 

"And who could have anticipated the vigorous politicizing and reinvigoration of drag that would be triggered by the election of Donald Trump?" (9) 

 

Who indeed? It seems that conservatism can be catalysing and not just repressive, then. Doonan kind of gives the game away by acknowledging that the politics of resistance is symbiotic with oppression.   

 

Like Bailey, Doonan quickly falls into a trap of his own making. On the one hand, he insists that we must cast aside old definitions and preconceived notions; learn to accept that the rules have changed: "In fact, there are no rules." (10)

 

But, on the other hand, he is obliged to apologise in advance to the rule-enforcing pronoun police: "I have done my best to use the correct pronouns and to dot all my i's and cross all my gender-identity t's" (11), so any offensive faux pas are "completely unintentional" (11).

 

Unfortunately, I'm not sure, Simon, ignorance of the new morality is a defence in woke law ...

      

 

III. 

 

The first chapter is on what Doonan calls Glamour Drag ... One of the defining characteristics of which is fierceness and the ability to deliver "taboo-busting spectacle" (13); something a bit Medusa-like. Having said that, Doonan wants to backtrack a little: "It would be a mistake, however, to think of glamour drag as being nihilistic" (16). 

 

To which one can only say, that's a shame - but worse is to follow; ultimately, says Doonan, drag is not a confrontation with the terrifying aspect of womanhood, it's a way of "satirizing our gender confusion, misogyny and castration anxieties [...] thereby mitigating our hang-ups" (16). 

 

In other words: "Drag is profoundly therapeutic." (16)  

 

At this point, I can no longer resist inserting the emoji I thought about inserting earlier: 🙄

 

If this is true, then drag is not an art and nor is it transgressive; it is rather a queer form of self-help (or self-empowerment to use that term again). 

 

But perhaps it isn't true: Doonan himself later quotes Holly Brubach (author of the 1999 study Girlfriend) who sees glamour drag "as less of a psycho-therapeutic" (40) phenomenon and more an attempt by men to to enter the 'realm of appearances' and so enjoy "'the privilege of not being accountable to truth or meaning or content, of dwelling entirely on the surface'" (40). 

 

Somewhat surprisingly, Doonan says this point is essentially true - thereby moving across from the sexual politics of desire to the fetishistic politics of seduction; i.e., a magical and ritualistic form of artifice that challenges the modern obsession with truth, transparency, and sexual liberation. Again, as a Baudrillardian, this makes happy. 

 

Moving on, one comes across other problematic claims: "The Victorian and Edwardian eras were noteworthy for their extreme prudishness." (18). Again, if the author only bothered to read a little Foucault, then he'd know not to say such silly things [c]; no woman ever fainted at the sight of a piano leg. 

 

Doonan is much better at simply giving us names, dates, and other details concerning actual drag queens from days gone by (and the book comes with many fantastic images). Though I'd have liked to have heard a little more about this claim: "The sexualization of drag [in the 1950s] was propelled by working-class gay men, living out fantasies of seducing heterosexual men and thereby becoming 'real women'." (23)

 

If that's true, then it feeds into (and arguably justifies) the so-called Lavender Scare which - along with the fear of communist infiltration - defined American culture in the post-War period [d]. 

  

I'm hoping Doonan might also say a bit more at some point about the relationship between drag queens and trans women - one might imagine certain tensions arising amongst those for whom femininity is pure artifice and performance (i.e., about the clothes and the makeup and the wigs and about the way you walk and talk) and those for whom it is born of hormonal drugs and gender affirming surgery.    

 

This paragraph, referring to the world after Wigstock - a drag festival founded in 1984 in Manhattan's East Village - certainly caught my attention:

 

"The post-punk era saw an explosive growth in a new kind of drag queen culture. Suddenly drag became much hipper, smarter, and, yes, postmodern. Glamour drag queens began to graze on perverse aspects of pop culture, mashing it up and spewing it back at their audience with knowing vigour. Judy and Marilyn were fine for the old gin-swilling gay audiences of the 1950s, but the Wigstock generation craved fresh sources of dragspiration." (33)

 

Doonan explains how the "new wave dragsters were inspired by a broad range of camp cultural offerings" (35), drawn from the worlds of film and popular music, and "propelled drag out of the gay ghetto and into broader culture" (35). In other words - and these are Doonan's words - the tacky gave way to the trendy. 

 

Drag culture formed a close alliance with the growing Harlem ball scene (i.e., the world of voguing) and it was "only a matter of time before drag hit the runways" (35) of the fashion world; the supermodels were, argues Doonan, essentially a type of drag queen - and Billy Beyond was a type of supermodel.   

 

Finally, Doonan closes his first chapter by inviting readers to meet the look queens ... 

 

"Look queens are glamour drag queens who generate shock and awe through extreme levels of cosmetic artistry. [...] They take that shimmering feminine visual realm that Brubach talked about, and magnify it for the age of Insta selfies and social media." (43)

 

Again, it was Jean Baudrillard who got there first and provides the best description of these look queens: 

 

"Everyone seeks their look. Since it is no longer possible to base any claim on one's own existence, there is nothing for it but to perform an appearing act without concerning oneself with being - or even with being seen. So it is not: I exist, I am here! but rather: I am visible, I am an image - look! look! This is not even narcissism, merely an extraversion without depth, a sort of self-promot­ing ingenuousness whereby everyone becomes the manager of their own appearance." [e]

 

There is, as we have mentioned, a politics attached to this - but it's a politics of seduction and not the politics of empowerment - a term that Doonan tediously returns to. To seduce, is to disempower the subject who exerts their gaze - it's the revenge of the object (something we have discussed many times on Torpedo the Ark).   

 

But seduction requires a certain horror and Doonan insists that the look queens have "helped to expunge any sordid and sinister overtones" (43) associated with drag; "constructing a creative, welcoming environment for cis females and young kids" (43). It's glamour drag for all - which is very democratic and inclusive, but also very boring; just another form of good clean fun for all the family. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Chapter two is on art drag. But readers who hope this will mean I reproduce a picture of Grayson Perry - the patron saint of such - are going to be disappointed. For I do not like Grayson Perry and do not recognise him as a "beloved public intellectual" (45). 

 

I'm a bit suspicious of this bold claim: "The incendiary nature of drag telegraphs edgy avant-gardism ..." (45) - particularly as it comes just a couple of pages after Doonan has told us that drag is now free of any danger or threat. You can't have it both ways, Simon. 

 

And, ultimately, there's a world of difference between Duchamp and Grayson Perry. As there is, indeed, between Warhol and Perry. The latter may be indebted to these two - who isn't? - but while Perry works within the conceptual framework they established, he seems keen to place art back on a more traditional basis (i.e., as something involving craftsmanship rather than just amusing ideas, ready-made objects, and mass production).     

 

Whilst I'm not overly keen on Grayson Perry, I really dislike someone else that Doonan seems to think the business - Leigh Bowery. 

 

Did Bowery really achieve "unimaginable levels of artistic originality, perversity and creativity" (57), or, ultimately, was he not just a self-indulgent narcissist looking to shock via crude provocation? 

 

One can't deny he had a talent for this - and that he was influential on the work of many talented individuals - but I think we need to keep things in critical perspective when it comes to figures who are regarded as iconic and/or legendary (though I appreciate that the curbing of enthusiasm is not a concept understood within the world of drag; a world wherein everyone and everything is fierce and fabulous all of the time).      

 

Doonan says that in comparison to someone such as Bowery, Duchamp's "early forays into art drag now seem quite genteel" (61). And I suppose that's true. But - Barthesian criticisms of gentility aside - I think I prefer some degree of refinement and self-restraint and see these as vital components of art (and society). I don't like vulgar individuals whether they are seeking to naturalise bourgeois values or passing themselves off as transgressive. 

 

One might even build a case arguing that in the current age good manners and good taste might ironically be seen as avant-garde (because countercultural) - and that it just might be more interesting to be charming and delightful than "appalling and provocative" (63). 

 

But that's another post, for another day ...  

 

  

Notes

 

[a] Fenton Bailey, Foreword to Simon Doonan's Drag: The Complete Story (Laurence King Publishing, 2024), p. 2. Please note that all future page references to Doonan's book will be given directly in the main text (in round brackets). 

 

[b] Not only has RuPaul's Drag Race aired for eighteen seasons in the US, but it has inspired many spin-off shows and numerous international franchises. The show has also earned multiple Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, for four consecutive years (2018 to 2021). 

      So I'm not quite sure why Bailey continues to speak only of the repression and erasure of his community by mainstream (heteronormative) society.      

 

[c] I'm thinking of L'Histoire de la sexualité 1: La volonté de savoir (1976) and Foucault's famous interrogation of the repressive hypothesis; i.e., the idea that Western society suppressed sexuality from the 17th to the mid-20th century. Foucault argues that discourse on sexuality in fact proliferated during this period, during which experts began to examine sexuality in a scientific manner and encouraged people to confess their sexual feelings and actions. 

      Interestingly, Foucault also shows how in the 18th and 19th centuries society took an increasing interest in sexualities that did not fit within the heteronormative framework; this included the sexuality of children, the mentally ill, the criminal, and the homosexual.   

 

[d] See the post titled 'Cocksuckers and Communists' (21 May 2015): click here.  

 

[e] Jean Baudrillard, 'Transsexuality', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict (Verso, 1993), p. 23.  

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this post might like to see a very early post on TTA - dated 26 December 2012 - and titled 'Life's a Drag' - click here.  

 

 

Part two of this post on butch drag, black drag, historical drag and comedy drag, can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

And for part three on popstar drag, cinema drag, and radical drag, click here.  

 

 

Transforming Memory into Memoir (and Memoir into Money)

(MDG Media International, 2019)

 

 'One does not write with one's ego, one's memory, or one's illnesses ...'

 

 

I.

 

The post-pandemic world has witnessed the mushrooming of a large and thriving memoir industry; many non-fiction bestsellers are now some form or other of personal narrative - often providing a handy life lesson or advice on how to overcome trauma, depression, addiction, etc. (there's always a market for relatable pain).  

 

It seems that, having survived Covid, more and more people are keen to get their stories down on paper; transforming memory into memoir - as those working in this sector like to say [1] - and, if possible, turning memoir into money (as if commercial success magically confirms the value and interest of an individual's life).

 

At best, I suppose, we might see this as a democratisation of a literary genre that was previously the reserve of the professional author reflecting on their life and work and/or the famous celebrity prepared to tell all - the chance for nobodies in an age of self-publishing to leave a written record which, they hope, will become a cherished family keepsake (and not just binned along with the rest of their junk). 

 

There remains, nevertheless, something about the memoir industry and the overcoding of lived experience that I find problematic ... 

 

 

II.   

 

If the ancient alchemists looked to transmute base metals into gold, then those offering their services as professional editors (or ghostwriters) of memoirs are looking to turn the sheer intensity of lived experience - and that includes memory as the active mechanism by which events are retained, reconstructed, and incorporated into our present identity - into a profitable business.

 

That seems a tad grubby to me; producing a professional-looking manuscript from the vital chaos of someone else's life by stripping away the idiosyncratic elements isn't quite the same as helping birth a dancing star. 

 

Far worse, however, than the commodification of the past, is dressing this up as some kind of psycho-spiritual quest; convincing people via expensive workshops and digital courses that by channelling their authentic self or personal truth they can achieve some kind of higher state or wholeness. 

 

 

III. 

 

Why writing matters is because it is ultimately an impersonal art. The writer writes not to express themselves, but to lose themselves within the text and become imperceptible to others; we know when we encounter good writing when the voice that speaks no longer belongs to an author but to language.  

 

Great thinkers, including the poet T. S. Eliot [2] and the philosopher Gilles Deleuze [3], have all come to the conclusion that the aesthetic erasure of the self is the name of the game, not finding one's own voice and speaking with sincerity or genuine emotion - and not turning one's own suffering into some kind of myth laden with universal meaning.

 

We may not like the fact, but our lives have no story arc. We are not on a journey and there's no beginning, middle, or end (and certainly no redemption). Life is a series of random, unresolved events; some good, some happy; some bad and some not so pleasant (most just boring). 

 

Nor do we have archetypal significance as individuals. When memoir becomes mythical it may increase reader interest (and thus market value), but it also becomes a falsehood designed to make reality intelligible (by explaining natural phenomena and human experience) and bearable (by offering emotional comfort and a sense of wonder in the face of the unknowable).        

As a rule, I would encourage most people to shut up most of the time; to not sacrifice their private lives on social media or by writing memoirs; to not turn turn themselves into a brand (or blog). 

 

And when someone with a slick website and a hundred-and-one professional qualifications tells you that everyone has a story to tell, keep in mind that this is just a sales pitch and that the person offering their services is not your friend or mentor or spirit guide; they will collect their fee whether you sell a single copy of your memoir or not. 

 

In sum: from memory to memoir isn't an invitation to self-discovery - it's a process designed to extract raw material (your life) and turn it into a unit of consumption.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Whilst I'm primarily thinking here of the book by Mark David Gerson - From Memory to Memoir: Writing the Stories of Your Life (MDG Media International, 2019) - the phrase 'memory to memoir' serves as a mantra, guiding principle, and marketing tagline across the memoir industry. 

      Gerson is probably the leading figure in this field. Not only is he a prolific author, blogger, podcaster, public speaker, counselor, and tutor, but he also describes himself as a 'groundbreaking visual artist' and 'gifted photographer' (like many such people, he's not shy in boasting of his own skills, qualifications, achievements, and awards). 

      Whilst I don't wish to single Gerson out, he would, nevertheless, make a perfect case study for a critique of the memoir industry; particularly the spiritual-cum-holistic healing branch of such, as Gerson's writing does at times veer toward the mystical (he frames memoir writing as a sacred act of self-channelling). 

      Readers who are interested in knowing more about this extremely successful individual and his work, can visit Gerson's website by clicking here.  

 

[2] See Eliot's essay 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920), in which he develops his theory of impersonal literature. The essay can be read on the Poetry Foundation website: click here.  

 

[3] According to Deleuze, literature is not as an attempt to express the inexpressible, or impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience. Above all, Deleuze wishes to stress that literature should not become a form of personal overcoding, which is why any form of writing that is reliant upon the recounting of childhood memories, foreign holidays, lost loves, or sexual fantasies, is not only frequently bad writing - but dead writing; for literature dies from an excess of emotion, imagination, and autobiography, just as it does from an overdose of reality. 

      See Deleuze's essay 'Literature and Life', in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael E. Greco (Verso, 1998). And see the post 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' (30 Aug 2013): click here. 

 

For a related post to this one on Blake Morrison's spilling the beans on the art of memoir writing, click here. 

 

  

Blake Morrison Spills the Beans on Memoir Writing

Blake Morrison Spills the Beans (SA/2026)

(Photo of Morrison by Charles Moriarty) 

 

 

The poet and author Blake Morrison is perhaps best known for three works of memoir: And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993); Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002); and Two Sisters (2023).  

 

To be honest, I've not read any of the above and as I have an instinctive aversion to Morrison - even though he is a great champion of Lawrence, particularly Sons and Lovers [1] - I don't suppose I ever will.  

 

I have, however, ordered a copy of his new book published by Borough Press: On Memoir: An A-Z of Life Writing (2026), as this genre of writing is of increasing interest to me, even whilst it's one I remain somewhat suspicious of and hostile to.  

 

And, funnily enough - if a recent essay in The Guardian is anything to go by - Morrison himself has a few doubts himself about memoir writing in the age of Substack and digital self-publishing: 

 

"What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell - 'nobody memoirs', the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them." [2] 

 

Still, whether written by nobody or somebody, candour is the key to memoir writing; "no matter how fraught the consequences". In a post-Maggie Nelson universe, it doesn't pay to be shy and, as Morrison goes on to note, shocking revelation has long been "an integral part of memoir [because] sometimes the facts are shocking".

 

To be honest, I'm not sure I like such explicit (often brutal and ugly) openness. I do think an author can overshare and that there is such a thing even in confessional writing as too much information. I would like to know, as a reader, how a writer feels about the death of a parent; I probably don't need to know they recall masturbating in the bath on the day it happened. 

 

Whether "the divulgence is sad-fishing on Facebook, curated self-glorification on Instagram or out-there revelation in a memoir", I'm afraid that I'm one of those readers who feels irritated and affronted by exhibitionist authors who figuratively spill the beans whilst literally inviting us to watch them jerk off. 

 

As Morrison acknowledges, it's not essential for writers to reveal all; they should be able to write "on their own terms and in control of what's committed to print". It's often a mixture of laziness and narcissism that causes a writer to indulge in bean spilling and oversharing. Even in the age of social media, discretion can still be a virtue. 

 

But, on the other hand, says Morrison, discretion is not such a virtue when it becomes a form of evasion driven by dishonesty or fear of how others will react:

 

"There's no point in telling a personal story if you censor yourself and hold back too much. Be brave [...] it's your version of events and if people close to you object, never mind - let them write their own memoir." [3] 

 

Having said that, like the exercising of discretion, the expression of candour requires technique: "It needs compression, structure, the right tone of voice. The task is to set down what happened, not parade extremes of feeling." 

 

In fact, I would go further than that and say the task is to reimagine what happened, not just record like a machine; to fictionalise and transform life into art. Ultimately, the best form of memoir is called a novel. But writing a novel is difficult, whereas - as we have noted - nobody and anybody can write a memoir. 

 

Clearly, Morrison and I disagree on this point: 

 

"Truth-telling is the measure of memoir, and it's not the same as autofiction. Readers will allow an author wriggle room, for comic exaggeration, say, but where there's knowing fabrication they'll feel cheated, even outraged." 

 

To which one can only ask this Easter weekend: What is truth? And repeat: memoir that doesn't become autofiction is merely poor writing - or what Deleuze describes as dead writing [4]. 

 

Morrison says that readers want to be able to trust writers. But here he forgets his Lawrence, who sagely advised us to trust the tale, not the teller and reminded his readers that art speech is essentially a form of telling lies, but that, paradoxically, "out of a pattern of lies art weaves the truth" [5].    

 

But it's not the kind of truth that most people want to hear: it's the truth that Oscar Wilde declared to be anything other than pure and simple [6] and which Nietzsche described as a convenient fiction or a forgotten lie [7]. 

 

Finally, what of the argument that readers want more than blog posts or fragments and snippets of text on Substack; that when the story is interesting and the writer is good, then they are justified in demanding a full-length (professionally published) memoir and that ultimately only such will serve and satisfy ...

 

Obviously, I don't agree with that. I think the best way to illuminate a life is in a series of lightning flashes; thus I privilege the glimpse over the detailed portrait [8].

 

But Morrison defends the latter against flashy short-form writing:  

 

"For myself [...] I think published memoirs have plenty to offer that social platforms can't, not least the rewards of a full-length story with a narrative arc, a set of characters, and an approach that doesn't depend on sensational self-exposure, allowing room for reversals, surprises, digressions, complications and a tussle between adversity and reprieve. At their best, memoirs develop with a subtlety unavailable in a short extract [...]" 

Morrison concedes that published full-length memoirs can - "when the author is a bumptious blabber or a catastrophiser" - be "as much a turn-off as online snippets". But, he says in conclusion, "where the self-disclosure is nuanced and the writing compelling" nothing beats a book (how very arborescent, as Deleuze would say). 

 

Some might see this as a hard-working and highly respected professonal author defending the traditional art and craft of writing. But one can't help interpreting Morrison's remarks also as a form of gatekeeping;i.e., safeguarding the elite world of serious literature and those who belong to such - editors, agents, critics and publishers - from the barbarian content creators and bloggers such as myself who are not looking to turn memory into memoir and memoir into money ... [9]

 

 

Blake Morrison Spills the Beans (II)

(SA/2026) 

     

  

Notes

 

[1] See Blake Morrison, 'Sons and Lovers: a century on', in The Guardian (25 May 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Blake Morrison, '"Enough of this me me me": Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing', The Guardian (4 April 2026): click here. 

      All quotes that follow in this post are from Morrison writing in this article.  

 

[3] Interestingly, Morrison goes on to write: "Readers are no less sensitive than they ever were, just sensitive about different things [...] Push it too far and there might be a social media storm and public backlash. [...] Writers can't afford to ignore the moral climate of the times. But they don't have to kowtow." 

      Again, I take a rather more aggressive line than Morrison. For me, it's not just a question of not being subservient; a writer worth their salt should stand against public opinion and challenge (transgress) the moral climate of their age (move beyond good and evil, as Nietzsche would say). 

 

[4] For Deleuze, writing is not as an attempt to impose a coherent and conventional linguistic form on lived experience. Above all, Deleuze wishes to stress that literature should not become a form of personal overcoding, which is why any form of writing that is exclusively reliant upon the recounting of childhood memories, foreign holidays, lost loves, or sexual fantasies, is not only bad writing, but dead writing. Literature, he says, can die from an excess of truth-telling, just as it does from an overdose of reality. 

      See Deleuze's essay 'Literature and Life', in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael E. Greco (Verso, 1998). And see the post 'A Deleuzean Approach to Literature' (30 Aug 2013): click here.   

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 14.

 

[6] Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). It can be found in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (HarperCollins, 2003).   

 

[7] See Nietzsche; On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873). This essay can be found in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Humanities Press International, 1990), pp. 77-97. 

 

[8] See the post 'I Shall Speak of Geist, of Flame, and of Glimpses' (29 Sept 2021): click here.  

 

[9] I pick up on this phrase in a sister post to this one, with reference to the work of Mark David Gerson, a leading figure in the memoir industry: click here.  

 

 

An Easter Message: Britain Must Go Pagan!

Image based on a photo from the Vivienne Westwood Archives

Instagram: @thewestwoodarchives (10 Jan 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

Some people are continuing to choke on their chocolate eggs that King Charles - Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith - has not shared an Easter message this year, despite wishing Muslims a blessed Eid at the end of Ramadan.  

 

With a mixture of outrage and insecurity, they protest that this is yet another sign of the Islamification of the UK and the erosion of Britain's Christian culture; its history, heritage, system of values, etc.

 

These are often the same people obsessed with flag waving and playing identity politics who tie their ethno-nationalism to Christianity; assembling beneath the Cross of St. George like modern day crusaders wearing replica football shirts. 

 

Where this will lead, is anybody's guess - although I think we all have a pretty clear idea ...

 

 

II. 

 

The argument seems to be that if you wish to counter the rise and spread of one virulent religious ideology, then you need another equally fanatic faith that preaches One God, One Truth, One Way.  

 

In other words, one must fight fire with fire and respond to a challenge by adopting the same methods, tactics, and weapons as one's opponent. 

 

It's a fundamentally anti-Christian philosophy, but ironically, it's one that far-right militants who call themselves Christian frequently fall back on in the belief that such a strategy is necessary to ensure not only the victory of Good over Evil, but their survival as a people.      

 

 

III.  

 

Personally, as an anti-theist, if the last thing I want to see is the submission of the English to Allah, then the second from last thing I wish to see is a resurgence of Christianity. Indeed, I would echo Vivienne Westwood during her late-1980s early-90s phase and declare: Britain must go pagan ... [1]

 

Whether that best takes the form of Ancient Greek aesthetics combined with classic British tailoring - as Westwood envisioned - or of a retro Anglo-Saxon heathenism, in which the English finally wake up to the fact that Christianity is itself a foreign import and the imposition of a Middle Eastern deity upon a people who have forgotten their own gods [2], is debatable.

  

Notes

 

[1] Click here to watch a short video on YouTube in which Westwood discusses her idea of neo-paganism in relation to her design aesthetic. 

 

[2] Without wanting to delve too deeply into English religious history, it's worth remembering that Christianity only became the dominant faith in England in the 7th century. Before that time, polytheistic religions were practised, including Anglo-Saxon heathenism, which encompassed a heterogeneous variety of beliefs and practices, with a good deal of regional variation. In was in many ways very similar to the Norse paganism practised by the Scandinavian peoples that would later be introduced to England by the Danes.

      If I were an ethnonationalist, it's this Early Medieval period that would excite my interest and inform my politics; it would be Woden and Thunor I'd worship, not Jehovah and Jesus.    

 

   

Delicious Poison: The Final Taste (1986-88)

Kirk Field downing the dregs 

of his most Delicious Poison 

 

'Waves form to break and suns rise to set ...'

 

This post is a continuation: to read part 1 - 

Delicious Poison: The First Sip (1981-85) - click here. 

 

 

I.

 

By early 1986, Kirk and I both found ourselves living back in Leeds ... 

 

The year started quietly (some might say ominously) with Delicious Poison playing a set at Haddon Hall to a virtually empty room. 

 

Their following gig, however, at a club called Adam and Eve's and promoted in the Yorkshire Evening Post, was one of their best: "The band gave a very loud, energetic, and much angrier performance than usual. No frills just the thrills, as people like to say." [1] 

 

Nevertheless, despite the band's slightly harder edge and the brilliance of new songs such as 'New Sun Rising', I found my enthusiasm for the project was waning - and I was growing tired of the entourage of losers that seemed to follow them everywhere; the Bromley Contingent they were not.   

 

Another birthday gig took place at Haddon Hall on June 7th, for which I had gifted Kirk a hand-painted 'New Sun Rising' T-shirt and which he wore on stage that night. Gordon [2] approached me after the show, offering £25 plus material expenses to outfit the rest of the band with similar shirts. 

 

I was slightly wary of getting too entangled in the band's inner workings again, but Kirk showed up at my door the following morning, and his persuasion won me over. I spent a whole day working on them, including a punky-looking unicorn design for guitarist Nick Ramshaw with the Delicious Poison slogan and song title (borrowed from the book by George Melly) 'Revolt Into Style' written underneath.  

 

At a time when the UK average wage was nearly £4 an hour, I should have asked Gordon for at least £50, but, I suppose, this is what's known as a labour of love, or an act of friendship. 

 

 

II. 

 

By the late summer, Kirk and I had relocated to London once more, for another assault upon the capital. 

 

On August 17th, we met up at the house he shared with the band in Tooting, not far from where they used to film on location for Citizen Smith [3]. That evening, fuelled by a bit too much whiskey, Kirk and I renewed vows of friendship and decided that we were, after all, two of a kind. Sadly, however, as the year wore on old differences resurfaced and our relationship remained somewhat fraught.  

 

A September set at the Rock Garden felt shaky; the band seemed nervous, perhaps intimidated by the London crowd. A few weeks later at a club in King’s Cross, the stakes felt higher. Gordon was talking about a potential Janice Long session [4], but the gig itself was another hit-and-miss affair. The room was mostly empty, save for a few friends, and I could see Kirk's frustration boiling over. I felt for him; despite all his hard work, something wasn't clicking [5]. 

 

For me, the breaking point came during a meeting with Kirk and Gordon at the GLO offices in October. As we discussed the band's image, the irreconcilable differences between my vision and theirs became impossible to ignore. At one point, for example, the idea was floated for Kirk to adopt a matador look. I suggested it would be far more provocative (and pagan) if he came out wearing horns to embody the spirit of the Minotaur instead. 

 

Neither Kirk nor Gordon seemed particularly amused by this. To break the silence that followed, I pitched an idea for a new song based on the story of Ariadne and of how we might incorporate Picasso's artwork. This, however, was rejected by Gordon as being a little too clever for the desired fanbase. 

 

The year ended with two more shows: one on December 6th at the Polytechnic of Central London and one six days later at the Fulham Greyhound, a pub renowned for its live music gigs. Let's just say that when Delicious Poison were good - as they were at the latter - they were very, very good; but when they were bad - as they were at the former - they were very, very bad. 

 

At the PCL gig the band looked tired and uncaring and were besieged by various technical problems to do with sound and lighting (which, to be fair, were beyond their control). If I hadn't felt a bond of loyalty to Kirk, I would probably have walked out. But I stayed - and even watched ten or fifteen minutes of the band they were supporting - the Blueberry Hellbellies. 

 

Not bad. And, as I noted in my diary (with echoes of Miss Brodie), for those who like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing they like. 

 

The Greyhound gig - the band's 50th - was much more fun and it was nice to see Kirk having a lot of fun (and being funny) on stage. He really should have been a stand-up comic rather than a singer and I remember once he suggested we form a comedy double act with the name Norfolk 'n' Good.    

 

 

III. 

   

1987: my new year's resolution was to try and keep my mouth shut as far as possible. 

 

Kirk, meanwhile, had decided to detoxify the band's name by making it less poisonous. From now on they would simply be billed as Delicious. They had their first gig of the year under this new name at the Marquee on 14 January and Kirk was excited about that - and about the emergence of what he called new pulse music that would set the future dancing to a different beat.

 

Retrospectively, I can see now that Mr. Field was remarkably prescient and that my failure to understand what he was talking about showed my own ignorance of (and fundamental lack of interest in) the direction in which youth subculture was moving. Almost ten years after the event, I was still obsessed with the Sex Pistols and Mclaren's great rock 'n' roll swindle. Kirk, however, was looking forward rather than back and the shortening of the band's name to Delicious was the first step in shedding the punk past for something more neon and euphoric. 

 

The Marquee gig was okay, but only okay. Despite intuitively sensing that old school rock as a guitar-driven band-oriented genre that involved songwriting and live performance was about to be superseded by house (i.e., electronic dance music characterised by the synthetic sounds of the Roland TB-303 and continuous DJ sets), for now Kirk was sticking with the boys in the band.   

 

 

IV.  

Didn't see much of Mr. Field for the next couple of months and when we did meet up for dinner at his place on March 7th, we didn't get on. No unpleasantries, but we bored one another. 

 

Despite that, we sat up talking until after 3am and Kirk confessed that, for the first time, he was making plans for a possible future post-Delicious (indicating that he felt Nick and Colin were holding him back). Perhaps that explains why the next gig - again at the Marquee (7 April) - was so appallingly bad ...

 

I wrote a scathing review in my diary afterwards, describing their sound as Americanised rock and their performance as tired, desperate, and clichéd. Left the venue feeling sad and disappointed and hoping that Kirk would call time on the band, remembering Malcolm's words from the Swindle about the need to put a dying horse out of its misery. 

 

Wrote a letter to Kirk telling him all this and received a reply a couple of weeks later essentially agreeing he had to make radical changes. Then, out of the blue, Colin Dodsworth (the bass player) rang me and asked if he could come over for a chat, to which I agreed. 

 

Unsurprisingly, he was less than happy with how things were going for the band and voiced a series of complaints not only about Kirk, but about the manner in which his own role was minimalised and marginalised. 'No one', he said, 'likes to feel that they could be replaced by a monkey'. Which, I suppose, is true. 

 

Didn't really know what to tell him (and, to be honest, didn't feel it was my place to advise him). It was clear he'd like to develop his own ideas in the future and so I simply wished him all the best (not mentioning that Kirk too was thinking of either quitting the group or sacking the other members of the band).    

 

Somewhat surprisingly, Delicious were still together for Kirk's 25th birthday gig on June 7th, at the Rock Garden - and, actually, it was a lot of fun. And they even had a couple of new songs! 

 

The thing that pleased me most, for Kirk's sake more than mine, was that a couple of members of the Porn Squad had made the journey down from Ulverston. They, along with several other old friends of Mr. Fields, formed the fan base of his punk band back in the late 1970s, Initial Vision. 

 

I think it tells us something significant when a person can command such love and loyalty and, it has to be confessed, Kirk's charm is such that even though I first met him over forty-five years ago - and even though I've not seen or spoken with him for almost thirty years - I still feel a lot of affection when I think of him or record these events here.         

 

 

V. 

 

Monday 3 August: another Delicious gig at the Marquee. By this point, there's not much more to say: it was very much just another show. The flyer the band produced to advertise it is reproduced below, alongside a Delicious Poison postcard from back in the day that I have kept all these long years.  

 

At the end of the month Kirk had decided the best thing for the band to do was release a single themselves (something he had previously long resisted doing). 'Delicious' b/w 'New Sun Rising' on a GLO financed label - Temptation Records - was originally scheduled for release in early November (1000 copies), but then put back to early in the new year. 

 

As far as I know, this never came to pass (or, if it did, I never received a copy). 

 

The year ended at the Limelight (22 December): it was a good night with new friends, but Delicious were like a group of strangers on stage, playing unknown (and unliked) material. Didn't get to speak with Kirk afterwards and the next time I saw him was in January 1988, in Mayrhofen, Austria, at the Scotland Yard pub, where he, Nick and Colin were now performing as the in-house band.

 

Without telling me any of the details, Kirk informed me that Delicious had officially broken up as a band (and that he wouldn't be having any future dealings with Gordon Lewis either). An inevitable ending and probably for the best. But I could tell Kirk was hurting, despite the brave face and the spin he was so good at putting on events. 

 

I noted in my diary with a mixture of envy, admiration, and amusement that Kirk 'planned to stay in Austria for as long as possible; hanging around with the ski bums; drinking hot chocolate, walking in the mountains, seducing the local girls, and only thinking about where to go and what to do next when he absolutely had to ...'  

 

It was a plan that, within two years, would lead Mr Field into a whole new world of adventure and he went on to become a defining voice of the UK rave scene, documenting and playing an active role in the very revolution he'd sensed coming back at the Marquee. 

 

Today, Kirk is a celebrated author and public speaker; his critically acclaimed memoir Rave New World was a tremendous (and much-deserved) success and I'm happy to know that, in a sense, the world has finally recognised the star I always knew him to be.  

 

 

 

   

Notes

 

[1] Quoted from an entry dated 24 Jan 1986 in The Von Hell Diaries 1980-89.  

 

[2] Gordon Lewis was effectively Kirk's manager. As mentioned in part one of this post, as the founder of the Gordon Lewis Organisation (GLO), he produced some of the most memorable pop videos of the period. By the end of the '80s, Lewis had opened a number of stylish café bars and clubs in Soho, London. 

      Today, he is perhaps best-known as an author; his book Secret Child (2015) was a Sunday Times bestseller and made into an award-winning short film in 2018, dir. Yewweng Ho. I still think he should have paid me more than a pony for the shirts. 

 

[3] Citizen Smith was a BBC TV sitcom (1977-1980), written by John Sullivan, and starring Robert Lindsay as Wolfie Smith, a would-be Marxist revolutionary and leader of the Tooting Popular Front. I was half-tempted to suggest that Kirk should adopt his look and start wearing an Afghan coat, Che Guevara T-shirt and black beret.   

 

[4] Janice Long's early evening Radio 1 show was well-known and respected for promoting music by indie and alternative bands.  

 

[5] To be fair, a second gig at the Rock Garden on 31 October - supporting Geno Washington and his band - went very well; a short, tight set with the brilliant new song 'Beautiful Friend'. Kirk was much more relaxed and made me laugh with his King of Siam impression, telling the crowd 'When I clap, you shall clap. When I cheer, you shall cheer. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!'  

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this post, might want to check out his book, Rave New World: Confessions of a Raving Reporter (Nine Eight Books, 2023), or his latest, Planes, Trains & Amphetamines: Clubbing Holiday Confessions (Velocity Press, 2025). Both are available in bookshops, via Amazon, or from Kirk's website: click here.